Modern consumer electronics, such as smart phones, personal digital assistants, and location based services devices, as well as enterprise electronics, such as servers and storage arrays, are packing more integrated circuits into an ever-shrinking physical space with expectations for decreasing cost. Every new generation of integrated circuits with increased operating frequency, performance and the higher level of large-scale integration have underscored the need for back-end integrated circuit manufacturing to provide more solutions involving the integrated circuit itself.
Numerous technologies have been developed to meet these requirements. Some of the research and development strategies focus on new package technologies while others focus on improving the existing and mature package technologies. Both approaches may include additional processing of the integrated circuits to better match the targeted package.
The continued emphasis in the integrated circuit technology is to create improved performance integrated circuit devices at competitive prices. This emphasis over the years has resulted in increasing miniaturization of integrated circuit devices, made possible by continued advances of integrated circuit processes and materials in combination with new and sophisticated device designs.
Numerous integrated circuit designs are aimed for mixed-signal designs by incorporating analog functions. One of the major challenges in the creation of analog processing circuitry (using digital processing procedures and equipment) is that a number of the components that are used for analog circuitry are large in size and are therefore not readily integrated into integrated circuits. The main components that offer a challenge in this respect are capacitors and inductors, since both these components are, for typical analog processing circuits, of considerable size. In response to the demands for improved package performance and analog circuitry integration, manufacturers may prepare to add passive devices on integrated circuit, packaging as well as printed-circuit boards to reduce overall system cost, boost overall system performance and enhance overall system reliability.
Although analog circuitry integration and processing support the miniaturization trend, other problems arise from this integration, particularly, the reliability of passive devices. For example, passive devices can pre-maturely breakdown below the operating voltage to reduce its useful lifetime.
Still thinner, smaller, and lighter package designs and integrated circuit designs and printed circuit designs have been adopted in response to continuing requirements for further miniaturization. At the same time, users are demanding the entire system, including integrated circuit, packages, and printed circuit boards that are more reliable under increasingly severe operating conditions.
Thus, a need still remains for a circuit system providing low cost manufacturing, improved yield, improved reliability, and greater flexibility to add passive devices on integrated circuits, packages, and printed circuit boards. In view of the ever-increasing need to save costs and improve efficiencies, it is more and more critical that answers be found to these problems.
Solutions to these problems have been long sought but prior developments have not taught or suggested any solutions and, thus, solutions to these problems have long eluded those skilled in the art.